Future-proofing GAA club morale
INT: A CROWDED DRESSING ROOM ON A JANUARY NIGHT
The senior panel are out of the shower. Tom Healy, the manager, stands up on a bench. A chorus of chimes confirm the landing of a document he has swiped onto everyone’s device.
“Listen up, lads. Need you to sign something.”
JJ Nolan, corner-forward and CPA rep, cops it straight away. “Not this shite again, Tom. That was last tried in 2017.”
Even the few minors knew the story. The year the senior championship was held up for 18 months after two players sued their club for breach of contract.
The usual carry-on; couple of fringe players dropped off the panel for a semi-final despite honouring every detail of the charter they’d signed. And lads starting who’d made a joke of the whole thing.
After a heap of injunctions, the Supreme Court eventually ruled for the players. The two lads were named at 22 and 23 at Easter, 2019. They didn’t get a run, but GAA club contracts weren’t heard of since.
Though Tom Healy often raised the idea, at an AGM, whenever they vowed to have a right cut off it this year.
Looks like he finally got his way.
“Difference is, boys, we’ll be doing it right. The contract sticks. You don’t obey, you don’t play. Sure we have the technology.”
Most of the players are scrolling the contract, eyes widening.
Healy breaks off to let one of his selectors, Jim Hogan, haul in a pallet of personalised clean protein shakes a drone just dropped off outside.
“Don’t worry, lads, we’ll keep it simple.
“Most of it is obvious stuff. We’ll have to synchronise our HereIAm accounts, just to log that you’re at every club event, but a lot of you do that anyway.
“And look, I know ParishPryde is still in beta and the Funeral For You alerts aren’t always accurate, but let’s stick with it. It all helps when we’re crowdfunding.
“You’ll need to make me an administrator on your MindKeeper profiles as well, so we can track your attitudes on our positivity barometer.
“Nearly everyone is on Bantzapp. So we have a fair idea how much craic you’re bringing to the thing. I’ll work out some metrics on it during the week. And Jim will give out SmartPlates after. Use them for every meal. We’ll know anyway if the intake doesn’t match your Medi readings.
“And look, you know yourselves, if you want to make some of that data public, especially the county lads, you’ll get a load of free stuff.”
In fairness to Tom, a lot of the health monitoring is compulsory. Their watches send readings on a host of vitals hourly to the HSE watchdog. Croke Park have taken that kind of thing seriously since rugby was banned and driven underground.
“And lads, it’ll be obvious if anyone isn’t wearing his GoogleJocks.”
That was just Tom trying to boost his own BantzBar, though the murmour of reaction is unlikely to have registered.
Billy ‘Murder’ Kennedy had already applied a thumbprint and was heading out the door. If he’s not checked in at home by nine, he’ll do time. As usual, Tony ‘Conspiracy’ Leamy was trying to voice an objection, something about the Éire Óg crowd and hacking.
Ever since, in the middle of his third term, and with approval dropping, Donald Trump became the last global leader to opt in to 24-hour TransparentLife surveillance, to prove he was beholden to nobody, Tony has been glued to his live feed, trying to spot edits.
But Tom wasn’t finished.
“The rest is just sensible stuff. Listen to one Ted Talk a day. But it has to be tailored to your mood map. We’ve unlocked the Marty Morrissey narrator for everyone.
“Every player must supply a weekly mantra. We’ll run with Gavin’s ‘Free the mind, but mind the frees’ for the challenge match Saturday. But you’ve more in you.
“Oh, and injured players must train on the Virtual. Same as tonight.”
Jim had taken five of them in the inside room on a Munster club final simulation. Scenario: six down with 10 to play. Ran it seven times til an Andy Keyes free won it after the full-back was blown for over-carrying.
Keyesy was only there for the last spin. A county senior, he has to check in twice weekly on club premises for at least a half hour to get the CPA portion of his grant.
He was leaning against the wall now, filing his Examiner column. On competition structures and the need for a calendar season. And maybe a sin bin, since they want 800 words.
Handy money now he can think it directly onto the ‘website’, as he still calls it. No more dealings with that bollox of a Content Facilitator.
Keyesy isn’t too pushed about this contract. A lot of it is standard practice with the county. Still, he’d be going on holidays at the usual time and fuck Tom and TripMonitor.
He was burnt the year his own PassionPlay readings were among those that found their way onto savagehunger.ie. Damaged his relationship with the supporters. Luckily, a techie pal found an exploit on an early version of MindKeeper and kept his positivity rank over 110% through the relegation season. He leaked that himself to rebuild his brand.
It was the same season Wikileaks had Jim Gavin’s Process, the year he completed the four in a row with South Dublin, and the personal 10 in a row. Kerry links to the leak were never proven.
But Keyesy would soon be out of it all anyway. Retired. He authorised a career data dump for Penguin at the weekend, so his automated autobiography will be out for Christmas. Tom was still at it.
“Obviously, you’ll each have to apply to the HSE for the maximum burnout exemption, so we don’t trigger any alarms.
“But lads, don’t forget, this is all about trust. That’s the only reason we’ll be monitoring everything.
“And at the end of the day, the most important thing is that we’re all enjoying ourselves.”
INT: A SITTING ROOM ON A SATURDAY NIGHT IN OCTOBER
A young computer science student is sitting on the sofa, pounding a laptop.
In his earpiece is Goran from Croatia, who they got hold of on the dark web.
There is a box of wristbands in club colours on the coffee table, with TRUST printed on them.
And pacing the room anxiously is Tom Healy, who has one big problem.
How can he massage the data to get Andy Keyes, not seen at the club since the county lost the All-Ireland to North Dublin, into his team for tomorrow’s county final?
